


Creak

by fraisemilk



Series: Onomatopoeia [8]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Character Study, Finding a home, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 08:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9811094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraisemilk/pseuds/fraisemilk
Summary: Have you ever seen a cat afraid of  the dark?Have you ever seen a cat afraid of sunlight?When Otose dies, she is sleeping; probably dreaming. Of what? So many things happen in dreams...





	

For a very long time, when she was still a kitten and not yet a woman, Catherine firmly believed in the existence of a “first memory”. Of course, recalling one’s _very first_ memory is impossible -- she chose hers from a dream she had, when she was very young, maybe still in the belly of her mother.

The memory wasn’t very clear. In it were the warmth and the purring of her mother, or maybe of one of her brothers, and light, so much light that the entire world was painted in shades of red and yellow. 

This memory she recalled very often with delight, even more delight since it was her _first memory_ , a root of some sort, until she realized one day the things she seemed to recall had probably never happened. 

She forgot the memory. 

It came back sometimes in her dreams. Vague, blurry.

It would come back a last time the night after Otose’s death. Then it would completely disappear. 

 

* * *

 

When Otose dies, she is sleeping; probably dreaming. Of what? So many things happen in dreams...

When she wakes up one morning, Catherine finds Tama sitting on the floor right next to her bed, looking intently at her. Her eyes are gleaming in the semi-darkness, making Catherine shiver. Tama doesn’t let her say anything - she whispers something.

Catherine doesn’t hear it. Tama’s voice is too low… too thin - the first meowing of a kitten to its mother.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t surprising, not really. The old woman has lived through many decades now. Her back and joints ached; every morning she would complain.

And so, Catherine instinctively understands why Tama is sitting there, right next to her bed, with a small, almost fragile look on her face.

 

* * *

 

The morning is bright. Sunlight spreads red-haired halos on the wooden floor of the room.

The laths creak under their steps.

 

* * *

 

 The scene is like a vision she had, in a dream, long, long ago.

 

* * *

 

Otose is lying still in her bed. Although the look on her face is one of deep slumber, there is something in the pallor of her cheeks, in the almost blue tint of her lips - facts pointing to another reality. Nothing moves in the room; only a few specks of dust shiver in the light that slips in through the cracks in the shutters; everything is utterly silent. Even the noise that Catherine and Tama make seems reduced, muffled by some kind of preternatural atmosphere.

 

* * *

 

Yes, it is - a vision. Eerie, phantasmagoric. 

A hand, lying there on the white sheet, thin, dead, entirely lifeless; the hand, a proof of what happened.

 

* * *

 

Death had probably come in from this hand. It creeped up the long skinny arm, up the red blood vessels and the white parched bones, to nestle in the chest, there, right there (in the vision she has, Catherine can’t see the place itself - the chest is covered by the blanket), and planted itself in the heart. The heartbeat had stopped instantly.

The old woman was still sleeping. It was… painless, yes. Maybe she had seen something in a dream, but had felt nothing, because who understands the strange visions that sometimes come in a dream? She hadn’t understood that death was calling. She was too profoundly asleep.

 

* * *

 

Catherine stands thinking like this for a long time. She doesn’t pay attention to what Tama is doing (Tama is looking at Catherine, pondering, thinking “how does it feel, knowing life will end after merely a few decades?” and “She died asleep. She didn’t feel anything.” and: “0100111101101000,” and: “010010010010000001101101011010010111001101110011001000000110100001100101011100100010000001100001011011000111001001100101011000010110010001111001”). She is startled out of her thoughts by the sudden urge to go outside, to look at something else than at the dead old woman. She looks fixedly at Tama, and then, still not saying anything, walks out of the room.

 

Tama frowns sadly at her departing figure.

Tama wonders: had she ever seen a cat afraid of the dark?

 

* * *

 

Outside, Catherine finds herself still caught in the same bizarre train of thoughts. She knows she should be doing something else - calling the cops, calling people, telling, talking, crying, organizing… - but the thoughts are stronger; she cannot get out of her own head.

She thinks, thinks, thinks. 

Of what? She isn’t sure she knows -- maybe of the vision, of the dream she had, which she cannot remember.

Did she dream the same dream Otose had when she died? Did Otose dream that night?

 

* * *

 

Catherine _had_ dreamed, that night. She had remembered an old dream; that was something that happened regularly: the past, coming back, grinning.

That time the vision had taken the form of a creak.

 

The sound of the floor, as she stepped on a lath -- “creak” -- she had known that this lath wasn’t one to be stepped on -- yes, she had known. She had to be very, very discreet. But stupid she forgot, stupid she stepped -- and the lath (and with it: the floor, the walls, the house, the entire world) creaked, as a coffin that opens agonizingly slowly.

 

In a park, she sits on a bench. Everything is very green. Spring is nearly here. She doesn’t look at anything. 

She hangs in the moment, in the deep silence provoked by the terrible noise. Her muscles twitch. Her eyes close. Her heart a whirlwind in a tempest, her breath a whisper in the blue air. In the house as in the park, nothing more than an instant passes. Her limbs feel heavy. Her heart is in a throbbing panic. One. Two. Three. Nothing. Everything remains silent.

 

* * *

 

On her bench, the world appears to be still turning. Three children are playing in the dust. What time is it? The Sun is not very high in the sky, but it’s still winter, so it must be late in the morning. What day is it, exactly? 

She should know -- but in her head, still buzzing, there are only a hand and a creak, only a dead body in an old woman’s room and a silent, silent house. 

She realizes she had wished for impossible things -- for things to last, for _Otose_ to last, for her foot not to step on the lath… only, some things are unstoppable, when they have already happened. The thought burns inside her: _it had already happened. When Otose died, she was asleep, dreaming, dreaming of something else than Otose_. 

The wind rustles her hair. She doesn’t care.

There is something more urgent there, inside her thoughts, beneath the dreams she remembers…

 

* * *

 

She goes home. Many people are there. She doesn’t really see their faces - a blur of colors, a clouded veil, black and grey mourning… The day passes by far too quickly, without it feeling like it has been at all. But when she closes her eyes on that night, she suddenly feels exhausted, and falls asleep immediately.

 

* * *

 

Creak. The sound of the floor, as she steps on a lath – she had known that this lath wasn’t one to be stepped on (she had to be very, very discreet). But stupid she forgot, stupid she stepped – and the lath (and with it: the floor, the walls, the house) creaks, as a coffin that opens slowly, agonizingly. She stops moving instantaneously. She hangs in the moment, in the deep silence provoked by the terrible noise. Her muscles twitches. Her eyes closes. Her brain a whirlwind in a tempest, her breath a whisper in the blue air. Nothing more than an instant passes. Her limbs feel heavy. Her heart is in a throbbing panic. One. Two. Three. Nothing. Everything remains silent. Then, she starts moving again, and this time she is careful not to stir the floor awake again. She is a cat. No home is safe under the paws of a thieving cat.

 

Young, Catherine has many friends. They all had to leave the home planet. _For freedom_ , or _for family_. 

Catherine has no family. Everything she did, everything Catherine does, is for the sake of her freedom. She finds friends who think like she thinks – they become a group.

Young, Catherine becomes a thief. Something inscribed in her genes.

 

In the house there was a gem: something that caught her friends’ eyes, something that “gleamed in the dark”. Blue or purple, maybe pink. Anyway, you got to find it, they said. And so, after a careful routine planning, she went. 

 

Have you ever heard of a cat that does not dream of sunlight? 

On each new planet onto which she set a paw, she stole. And while she stole, she wished for beautiful things to happen to her; for Fortune to embrace her, finally. For the gods her parents and uncle worshipped to answer, finally. But each place turned out to be as dirty, as miserable, as depressing as her home planet had been, before she left it behind forever. Each home she stole from was the reminder of a life she just couldn’t enter. A door closed to the thief, ironically, forever.

Somehow, some day, this became a permanent attribute of her life: she is a cat, she is a thief. She is poor, she is unlucky. She is proud, she is… somehow, somewhere, free. She has to be.

 

She gets caught. There was no jewel. There were no “friends” -- a trap, set up by ugly men, ugly cats that laughed at her. 

She lives in a prison for a few months, before she finally manages to run away. 

She finds a new planet. There, she finds new friends; Catherine is not so young anymore, but she still cannot bring herself to be completely alone, for some reason. 

Catherine is not young anymore. There is blood on her claws, and bone stuck in her hair.

 

* * *

 

For too long she had stayed inside her own shadow. Curling up in the cold, odd space of her own thoughts; never thinking: _I could get out_. Have you ever seen a cat afraid of sunlight?

Perhaps she was not afraid, no, no… The shadow had simply become the only thing that she could call “home”. 

In her shadow there were closets painted blue, and dirty rugs, and broken stained glass. She would step on these and bleed, but her blood would only mingle with her own blood; the scars on the sole of her feet would heal and, after a while, feel safe, feel like “home”. 

There was not a single looking-glass in her shadow; the multi-faceted, distorted shards of reflections, staring up at her from the floor, were enough. 

The shadow had been safe, for a while; as long as it remained secret and dark and hers. It had remained a sacred place for a long spell of time; a decade, two decades? 

But then sunlight had burst into the home, fragmented colors, dispersed the blues and blacks, retracted the fumes and the secrecy out of it. Have you ever seen a cat afraid of sunlight?

 

* * *

 

Whispering her laments into an old woman’s shadow, ears curled, skin tight on her fears, eyes closed on a prayer, the prayer of sunlight, the prayer of home, the prayer that maybe one day she would be able to step out of her own shadow;

The ground that sunlight touches, the feet that sunlight kisses, _are_ sacred;

Something out of herself, something strange, something odd;

Something gentle in touch and something beautiful in a slow, never-ending routine:

Yes, people she could love as never she had thought she could love, absolutely, entirely, in and out of herself, mad with the thought, grandiose in her prayer.

A prayer that still resonated in the image of this hand, lying there, still, white, parched, old and cold; death had passed, the body had been deserted. Sunlight, still, clung to the hand, to the tip of the old woman’s fingers.

Have you ever met a cat that could forget sunlight?

 

* * *

 

When she wakes up, Catherine has in her thoughts the image of her first memory. Red yellow orange blurring, softness, the caress of light wind. 

She finds Tama in the bar, sweeping the floor with a brand new broom. 

01000100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110011 01101100 01100101 01100101 01110000 00100000 01110111 01100101 01101100 01101100 00111111 

Yes, I slept well. 

Tama looks at her fixedly. Catherine shifts her weight from one foot to another, and when she does, the wooden floor creaks.

Well, let’s get to work, then.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello yes, I am back with an onomatopoeia, and a character, and a sad-happy story! Been stuck in a writing block for the past few months, but it's coming back... Spring is nearly here!!!  
> Kudos and comments are, as always, appreciated!
> 
> (Tama is speaking in binary, you can easily find an online converter.)


End file.
